Hello all.
I have added a counter and guestbook to the little page. I am pretty sure they have the interweb in heaven now, so i bet the fellas will (present tense) be touched by the rising counter and kind words in the guestbook.
I get a thrill going to the stats page (admin only) and seeing how many people have come to the page and where they are coming from. I thought this would be a good way to share that with you all.
Take care,
* joesepi
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
182Albiz, so beautiful to see the letter you wrote about Mikey in print. So beautiful too to hear from Agostino and so many others. Please allow an old man, driven too by the need to say something publicly, to offer a few words about Mikey, Silkworm, and Electrical Audio, here on this message board.
For my band, Bedhead -- and this would later and to a greater degree be the case for The New Year -- Silkworm were our best band friends. Our music was different from theirs, at least in a superficial sense, but we saw the world in the same way. Meeting up with them in some place far from home to play a show was like the image sometimes imagined of British and French soldiers meeting at a safe spot in the trenches in WWI. We couldn't wipe the smiles from our faces. We may have spoken a different language, in some sense, but we were there for the same reason, and we celebrated what always felt like a struggle against insurmountable forces by drinking, eating, and laughing at everything.
About five or six years ago I asserted myself as Silkworm's keyboard player before their first tour of Italy. Fake Italian -- for good or bad (Mikey cheerfully sort of hated it) -- was born on this unforgettable trip. So, more importantly, were many memories of Mikey. The one that has played in my mind over the last week took place in Genova. Mikey talks about this in his diary on the Silkworm website, but I want to add to that account my perception of him. This was one of those insane, endless nights in an otherworldly city -- everything he says in his entry and more. It was also an occasion to watch a fearless human being driven by a superhuman sense of curiosity and excitement -- everything Albiz says in his letter and more. When we got to our hotel room, around 5am, Mikey pulled open the large shutters over a window that looked out onto a moonlit sixteenth-century urban landscape. A normal person would enjoy the view. Mikey wanted to jump to the building across the street. We were four tall flights up, so this immediately struck me as an insane idea that even the massive amount of drinking we had done couldn't make reasonable. But before I had time to object I saw the back of Mikey, who was hanging on the railing of the building on the other side. He pulled himself up, got situated, and then stuck out his arm to help me get over -- and what we saw once we were both there, on the other side, was worth the risk. But what I keep seeing now is the image of Mikey flinging himself, without hesitation, across an urban gorge. I don't know what I believe happens after death; Mikey, because he enjoyed life so much, is the kind of person who I wanted to live as long as it's humanly possible to live. What's comforting now, because something has to be comforting, is that, as long as I knew him, he was entirely unafraid of the unknown.
Silkworm are another of the many casualties of what happened last week. Enough people here on this website are in bands that I don't need to elaborate on what a special and fragile thing a band is. Many of us already know that bandmates are like spouses or siblings, and that bands are families in every meaningful sense of the word. Silkworm as I mainly knew them -- here I mean Tim, Mikey, Andy, and Vickie (Tim's wife and the band's de facto tour manager/wife/sister/mother for fifteen years) -- were these things to a degree I've never seen before. To say they spent fifteen years together is an abstraction. They knew everything about each other and had the kind of relationship that could withstand any disturbance. Like a couple still obviously in love and excited to be around each other decades after the honeymoon, they were a statistical anomaly, heartbreaking, and inspiring, all at once. I have loved every second I've been around them. And being in the studio with them (and Albiz), in particular, will always be one of the most significant and enjoyable experiences of my life. Bearing witness to Andy playing guitar parts that are so otherworldly they convince you there is another being lurking inside his body (Nonno, this would explain so much!); watching Tim play basslines so solid and massive that they were prefiguring the strength he has shown over the last week (losing three friends and still managing to find time to write emails and make calls, as well as the energy to be "the dependable one"); and watching Mikey play drums like no one I have ever heard or seen, with total power and precision, and in a manner that might suggest that it was possible to be the prince he was in ordinary life because behind the drumset he could be a monster -- this experience, of which Albiz and I, like lottery winners, got to sit in the middle, is the kind of thing I dream of as a musician and music fan. I don't have the language to describe what it feels like to experience Mikey's death while thinking about Tim and Andy and their fans, friends, family, and sidekicks losing what, to me speaking here as fan, has been one of the greatest bands I've ever heard, seen, or watched interact.
This brings me, in a more hopeful spirit, to Electrical Audio. It's hard to know where to start extolling Albiz, but the place that represents everything that is great that he has done is without a doubt the studio that he and Heather, Greg Norman, Russ, Bill Skibbe, Chad, Dave, John Novotny, Rob Bochnik and others built and maintain. We have all been reminded that the universe does not reward virtue. But other people can reward each other; and I hope someday that there are books written about Electrical: about the people who erected it, the ethos by which they were guided, and the genius that went into its construction. Nothing revealed what is so great about this place, to me anyway, like making the last two Silkworm records. Mikey sat in "Alcatraz," a small carpeted room with windows that look into "Kentucky," where I was, and "Center field," where Tim and Andy were. Albiz could see most of us from the control room, but in the studio sound is more important than sight. The band wore headphones plugged into to the unlikely creators of intimacy, the Furman headphone mixers. Every instrument sounded perfect. Those of us who drink were "set up." We went through versions of songs with the sense that we were inside each other's heads. Time lost its mechanized feel. When we fell into each other sight lines, we looked at one another for sustained periods that would be uncomfortably long for anybody but athletes, musicians, or people making the beautiful love. We made jokes and listened intently to each other play. Every memorable aspect of this experience was made possible, or at the very least distinct, by this studio, and I hope anyone who has recorded there will know what I'm talking about. I want to say here to the people who envisioned and constructed it, your genius and hard work created and sustain an environment in which it is possible to be uniquely close to other human beings. Anyone who has experienced this will always be indebted.
Of course I'm thinking of all this because an even greater capacity of the studio was apparent this past Monday, when it became the place for Mikey's wake. What was instantly clear as I walked in and saw pictures of Mikey adorning the wall, his drum set placed like an altar in Center Field, and so many people congregated in a space constructed of pristine materials, is that this studio is -- what it has really been all along -- a cathedral for a happily secular group of people, constructed for the worship of friendship. Among other things, what that means to me is that Albiz and his friends/co-workers have done on a larger scale what many of us have done or tried to do with our bands. He has created lasting infrastructure for an enormous group of friends. Amid all the failing trust in the world, and all the ways in which people surrender to the worst aspects of consumerism and convention, Electrical is a reminder that it is possible to materialize ideals. And for anyone who has ever wondered how and why spaces become sacred, Monday night revealed this process unfolding.
All this is a long, clumsy way of saying, it was comforting to say goodbye to some of our friends while having so many reasons to express gratitude to some of our others.
In no small part because of this friendship, we will talk about Mikey as long as we're alive and we will, I hope, all continue to make music in the spirit that has brought all of us so close together.
Con molto amore,
Biznono
For my band, Bedhead -- and this would later and to a greater degree be the case for The New Year -- Silkworm were our best band friends. Our music was different from theirs, at least in a superficial sense, but we saw the world in the same way. Meeting up with them in some place far from home to play a show was like the image sometimes imagined of British and French soldiers meeting at a safe spot in the trenches in WWI. We couldn't wipe the smiles from our faces. We may have spoken a different language, in some sense, but we were there for the same reason, and we celebrated what always felt like a struggle against insurmountable forces by drinking, eating, and laughing at everything.
About five or six years ago I asserted myself as Silkworm's keyboard player before their first tour of Italy. Fake Italian -- for good or bad (Mikey cheerfully sort of hated it) -- was born on this unforgettable trip. So, more importantly, were many memories of Mikey. The one that has played in my mind over the last week took place in Genova. Mikey talks about this in his diary on the Silkworm website, but I want to add to that account my perception of him. This was one of those insane, endless nights in an otherworldly city -- everything he says in his entry and more. It was also an occasion to watch a fearless human being driven by a superhuman sense of curiosity and excitement -- everything Albiz says in his letter and more. When we got to our hotel room, around 5am, Mikey pulled open the large shutters over a window that looked out onto a moonlit sixteenth-century urban landscape. A normal person would enjoy the view. Mikey wanted to jump to the building across the street. We were four tall flights up, so this immediately struck me as an insane idea that even the massive amount of drinking we had done couldn't make reasonable. But before I had time to object I saw the back of Mikey, who was hanging on the railing of the building on the other side. He pulled himself up, got situated, and then stuck out his arm to help me get over -- and what we saw once we were both there, on the other side, was worth the risk. But what I keep seeing now is the image of Mikey flinging himself, without hesitation, across an urban gorge. I don't know what I believe happens after death; Mikey, because he enjoyed life so much, is the kind of person who I wanted to live as long as it's humanly possible to live. What's comforting now, because something has to be comforting, is that, as long as I knew him, he was entirely unafraid of the unknown.
Silkworm are another of the many casualties of what happened last week. Enough people here on this website are in bands that I don't need to elaborate on what a special and fragile thing a band is. Many of us already know that bandmates are like spouses or siblings, and that bands are families in every meaningful sense of the word. Silkworm as I mainly knew them -- here I mean Tim, Mikey, Andy, and Vickie (Tim's wife and the band's de facto tour manager/wife/sister/mother for fifteen years) -- were these things to a degree I've never seen before. To say they spent fifteen years together is an abstraction. They knew everything about each other and had the kind of relationship that could withstand any disturbance. Like a couple still obviously in love and excited to be around each other decades after the honeymoon, they were a statistical anomaly, heartbreaking, and inspiring, all at once. I have loved every second I've been around them. And being in the studio with them (and Albiz), in particular, will always be one of the most significant and enjoyable experiences of my life. Bearing witness to Andy playing guitar parts that are so otherworldly they convince you there is another being lurking inside his body (Nonno, this would explain so much!); watching Tim play basslines so solid and massive that they were prefiguring the strength he has shown over the last week (losing three friends and still managing to find time to write emails and make calls, as well as the energy to be "the dependable one"); and watching Mikey play drums like no one I have ever heard or seen, with total power and precision, and in a manner that might suggest that it was possible to be the prince he was in ordinary life because behind the drumset he could be a monster -- this experience, of which Albiz and I, like lottery winners, got to sit in the middle, is the kind of thing I dream of as a musician and music fan. I don't have the language to describe what it feels like to experience Mikey's death while thinking about Tim and Andy and their fans, friends, family, and sidekicks losing what, to me speaking here as fan, has been one of the greatest bands I've ever heard, seen, or watched interact.
This brings me, in a more hopeful spirit, to Electrical Audio. It's hard to know where to start extolling Albiz, but the place that represents everything that is great that he has done is without a doubt the studio that he and Heather, Greg Norman, Russ, Bill Skibbe, Chad, Dave, John Novotny, Rob Bochnik and others built and maintain. We have all been reminded that the universe does not reward virtue. But other people can reward each other; and I hope someday that there are books written about Electrical: about the people who erected it, the ethos by which they were guided, and the genius that went into its construction. Nothing revealed what is so great about this place, to me anyway, like making the last two Silkworm records. Mikey sat in "Alcatraz," a small carpeted room with windows that look into "Kentucky," where I was, and "Center field," where Tim and Andy were. Albiz could see most of us from the control room, but in the studio sound is more important than sight. The band wore headphones plugged into to the unlikely creators of intimacy, the Furman headphone mixers. Every instrument sounded perfect. Those of us who drink were "set up." We went through versions of songs with the sense that we were inside each other's heads. Time lost its mechanized feel. When we fell into each other sight lines, we looked at one another for sustained periods that would be uncomfortably long for anybody but athletes, musicians, or people making the beautiful love. We made jokes and listened intently to each other play. Every memorable aspect of this experience was made possible, or at the very least distinct, by this studio, and I hope anyone who has recorded there will know what I'm talking about. I want to say here to the people who envisioned and constructed it, your genius and hard work created and sustain an environment in which it is possible to be uniquely close to other human beings. Anyone who has experienced this will always be indebted.
Of course I'm thinking of all this because an even greater capacity of the studio was apparent this past Monday, when it became the place for Mikey's wake. What was instantly clear as I walked in and saw pictures of Mikey adorning the wall, his drum set placed like an altar in Center Field, and so many people congregated in a space constructed of pristine materials, is that this studio is -- what it has really been all along -- a cathedral for a happily secular group of people, constructed for the worship of friendship. Among other things, what that means to me is that Albiz and his friends/co-workers have done on a larger scale what many of us have done or tried to do with our bands. He has created lasting infrastructure for an enormous group of friends. Amid all the failing trust in the world, and all the ways in which people surrender to the worst aspects of consumerism and convention, Electrical is a reminder that it is possible to materialize ideals. And for anyone who has ever wondered how and why spaces become sacred, Monday night revealed this process unfolding.
All this is a long, clumsy way of saying, it was comforting to say goodbye to some of our friends while having so many reasons to express gratitude to some of our others.
In no small part because of this friendship, we will talk about Mikey as long as we're alive and we will, I hope, all continue to make music in the spirit that has brought all of us so close together.
Con molto amore,
Biznono
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
184I am new to this board, I found it from reading the silkworm board. I only got to see silkworm a few times but i have been a fan for about 10 years. Silkworm was a band that meant more to me than probably any other music I have cared about, I guess the integrity of the guys really comes through in their work and I connected hard with it and I feel life has been richer for it. If that even makes sense. I met Michael a few times but reading his tour diaries over the years is how I came to enjoy who he was as a person. I haven't been so affected by someone's death in a long time, it is strange as I didn't know him but his passing hurt worse than losing relatives has in the past. I am so sorry for the loss to anyone who was close to him.
Matt, your letter was beautiful. It is fitting that you cared about Michael and Silkworm so much, as Bedhead and now the New Year are the only bands I held in as high regard as Silkworm over the years. I have been able to see your bands many times over the years, including that last Bedhead show in Houston at Rudyard's. A band I had in the 90's was fortunate enough to open for Bedhead once and you guys were most gracious. I hope you continue to make records for a long time. I especially hope you work with Tim and Andy in the future, I can't imagine what this has done to them personally and I would hate to see them stop making music together.
Thanks for letting me post this here, I look forward to participating in other threads not so heavy on the heart.
Matt, your letter was beautiful. It is fitting that you cared about Michael and Silkworm so much, as Bedhead and now the New Year are the only bands I held in as high regard as Silkworm over the years. I have been able to see your bands many times over the years, including that last Bedhead show in Houston at Rudyard's. A band I had in the 90's was fortunate enough to open for Bedhead once and you guys were most gracious. I hope you continue to make records for a long time. I especially hope you work with Tim and Andy in the future, I can't imagine what this has done to them personally and I would hate to see them stop making music together.
Thanks for letting me post this here, I look forward to participating in other threads not so heavy on the heart.
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
185I'm deeply sorry for the friends and family of these three fine gentlemen. It's apparent from all the posts how much they will be missed. The world's rhythm has just lost a beat...
(sorry for the late post, this is the first chance I've had to check in on the EA board in almost 2 weeks and the first I've heard of this terrible news. Been loaded up with out of town company but felt it was important to acknowledge)
(sorry for the late post, this is the first chance I've had to check in on the EA board in almost 2 weeks and the first I've heard of this terrible news. Been loaded up with out of town company but felt it was important to acknowledge)
Don't let the strawberry win.
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
186I just wanted to drop by and say "Salut, Mikey". Boy oh boy, I loved and respected this man to no end, and I miss him very much.
Special thanks to Tim Midgett, Steve Albini, Matt Kadane and Agostino Tilotta for their incredible words. Reading the eloquent words of his brothers has brought great comfort to me, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your superhuman levelheadedness and good cheer.
Maybe sometime I will post a funny Mike Dahlquist story. Not now. But maybe sometime.
So great, Mikey!
Salut, Friend!
Special thanks to Tim Midgett, Steve Albini, Matt Kadane and Agostino Tilotta for their incredible words. Reading the eloquent words of his brothers has brought great comfort to me, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your superhuman levelheadedness and good cheer.
Maybe sometime I will post a funny Mike Dahlquist story. Not now. But maybe sometime.
So great, Mikey!
Salut, Friend!
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
187A while back, just after the great American poet Robert Creeley's death earlier this year, a thread on these message boards was devoted to Creeley wherein some of his poems were posted in full.
Michael Dahlquist was one of the folks who posted a Creeley poem. I reproduce his post here.
Michael Dahlquist was one of the folks who posted a Creeley poem. I reproduce his post here.
Michael Dahlquist, quoting Robert Creeley wrote:
"goodbye"
(...)
The century was well along
when I came in
and now that it's ending,
I realize it won't
be long.
But couldn't it all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother'd say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,
did right always have to be so wrong?
I know this body is impatient.
I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.
Yet I loved, I love.
I want no sentimentality.
I want no more than home.
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
189The case was continued to 8/2/05 at 9:00 Room 105.
If there is any update here on what happened today, I'd be interested to know. Thanks very much.
Remembering Michael, Doug, and John (was: not again)
190It sounds like a bill of indictment will be handed to a grand jury this week.
The grand jury will decide to indict (or not).
If they determine an indictment is warranted (very likely), then an arraignment (presentation of charges to the defendant and probable entry of a plea) will happen sometime in the next few weeks.
I think the thing Friday is a logistical deal, but I don't really know that much about what will happen. Maybe bond etc. will be addressed. Others surely know more about this kind of thing than I do.
Anyone who cares to attend the court proceedings should consider it, in my view. A presence on behalf of the victims can help, as long as it is respectful of the process, of course.
Thx,
TM
The grand jury will decide to indict (or not).
If they determine an indictment is warranted (very likely), then an arraignment (presentation of charges to the defendant and probable entry of a plea) will happen sometime in the next few weeks.
I think the thing Friday is a logistical deal, but I don't really know that much about what will happen. Maybe bond etc. will be addressed. Others surely know more about this kind of thing than I do.
Anyone who cares to attend the court proceedings should consider it, in my view. A presence on behalf of the victims can help, as long as it is respectful of the process, of course.
Thx,
TM